Symptoms of Macular Degeneration

What are the symptoms of macular degeneration?

First of all, know that there are two types of age-related macular degeneration (AMD): Dry and Wet.

While dry AMD occurs in about 90% of all AMD cases, there normally aren’t early symptoms. With wet AMD, the early stage sign is that you’ll see straight lines appearing as wavy lines instead.

Symptoms of AMD

As AMD advances, here are the common symptoms:

Central vision (straight line) loss
Blurry vision (especially having difficulty w/ blurry words when reading)
Difficulty adjusting to low-level light (such as dimly lit restaurants)
More difficulty with recognizing faces
Central vision blind spots
Need for brighter light sources when doing close work or reading
Decreased brightness (or intensity) of colors
Drusen: When yellow deposits form under the retina & occurs with dry AMD
Hallucinations of people or shapes (advanced stages)

If you have dry macular degeneration, it can affect both eyes or even only one. Your better eye may compensate for the weak eye if you develop it in only one eye.

This may cause the good eye to compensate and it’s possible that you won’t notice the change in the affected eye at first.

Cause of AMD

We still don’t know the exact causes, except that it comes with age.

The part of your eye damaged during this process is the macula, which is responsible for providing you detailed and sharp central vision.

Known Risk Factors

Age: Especially after the age of 50, the risk of developing macular degeneration is high. It’s most common, however, in folks who are older than 65.

Race: Most common in Caucasians.

Smoking: Cigarette smoking increases the risk.

Family History: If AMD is in your family, you’re more likely to also develop it.

Other risk factors: Obesity, cardiovascular disease, unhealthy diet, high cholesterol.

Stages of Dry AMD

There are 3 stages to dry macular degeneration:

Early: This is when small or medium size drusen are found. Drusen are yellow deposits found under your retina. Again, you still may not have seen any noticeable symptoms.

Intermediate: Symptoms may still have not shown up, but this stage is defined when a person has quite a few medium-size or one or more large drusen. At this stage, some people are seeing the blurred central vision spot.

Advanced: The blurry spot at the central spot in your vision is noticeable. This is called geographic atrophy, as the macula’s light sensitive cells are breaking down.

Treatment for AMD

Once you’ve noticed the symptoms of macular degeneration, the next question is how treatment may help. Unfortunately, there aren’t any treatments that will reverse or “cure” AMD.

However, the dry version of AMD is a slow progression and you’ll most likely never lose all your sight and will be considered to have low vision.

One thing your doctor may suggest is that you take a high dose zinc and antioxidant formulation, such as AREDS. This formulation has been shown through studies to help slow down the progression of age-related macular degeneration.

Living with AMD

It can be difficult emotionally to deal with your vision loss. I’ve lived with low vision myself for over 25 years and understand exactly what you’re going through.

It’s important that you deal with any feelings of depression, anxiety, frustration or anger through the help of support groups (link to our support group page) and other low vision communities.

My goal is to offer you great hope in terms of how technology can help you lead an empowering and independent life.

I’ve done a great deal of research into the high tech gear those of us with low vision can use to combat the symptoms of macular degeneration.

If you’d like full details on these exciting findings, fill out the form below.